Immortality Medicine

Men who were single in the 1960s were 64% more likely to suffer a fatal stroke over the next three decades than their married counterparts.

The risk of fatal stroke was also 64% higher in men who reported dissatisfaction with their marriages than in men who rated their marriages as successful.

That figure is comparable to the risk of fatal stroke faced by men with diabetes.

References:
Single Men Have Higher Risk of Stroke. WebMD.

From Half Full: Science for Raising Happy Kids:

Let Kids Just Play: unstructured play time is actually more important than homework.

Children have lost 8 hours per week of free, unstructured, and spontaneous play over the last 2 decades due to homework.

Decrease in unstructured play time is in part responsible for slowing kids’ cognitive and emotional development. Today’s 5-year-olds had the self-regulation capability of a 3-year-old in the 1940s; the critical factor seems to have been not discipline, but play.

Pretend play is particularly beneficial, so make sure kids have ample time for it.

Image source: Child playing with bubbles. Wikipedia, Steve Ford Elliott, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License.

The exercises below have been adapted from a ProBlogger post. Most of the names have been modeled after popular social media services such as Twitter, RSS, Blogger, etc,

1. Cyber Squats. Set your chair aside for a few minutes and instead move to a semi-squat position with thighs parallel to the floor. Hold for 1 minute.

2. RSS Raises. As you’re sitting at your desk, straighten your knees and lift your legs out in front of you.

3. Ten Minute “Move it!” Break. Alternate jogging in place with jumping jacks – do a minute of each and repeat 5 times.

4. Twitter Tummy Tone. Tighten your abdominal muscles for 30 seconds and then release.

5. Social Squeezes. Tighten your gluteal muscles for 30 seconds and then release.

6. Ten Minute “Move it!” Break. Grab a step stool and climb up and down.

7. Inbox Incline. While you’re sitting with your feet on the floor, raise your heels so you are on the balls of your feet and lower them.

8. Ten Minute “Move it!” Break. Do walking lunges around the house. You can add some weights and do bicep curls at the same time.

9. Blogger Breather. Close your eyes and focus on your breath. Count to 10 as you slowly inhale through your nose, thinking positive thoughts. Exhale through your mouth, again counting to 10. Release all the tension and stress out of your body.

10. Sign Off Stretches. Shoulder shrugs – with your head at your chest, shrug your shoulders up and down. Neck Rolls – relax your shoulders and let your head roll forward. Slowly rotate your head in a circle. Repeat five times.

P ushups
S itups
L unges
S quats

Exercises that can be done with just body weight: PLSS.

domain.

18-year-old London teenager talks about life with the “silent killer” Hepatitis C and shares the dramatic story of how she came to be infected.

References:
Life with Hepatitis C for London’s teenage ‘It Girl’. CNN.

From the NYTimes:

“Distracted driving has gained much attention lately because of the inflated crash risk posed by drivers using cellphones to talk and text.

But phones aren’t just distracting drivers; they make pedestrians inattentive too.

Distracted walking combines a pedestrian, an electronic device and an unseen crack in the sidewalk, the pole of a stop sign, a toy left on the living room floor or a parked (or sometimes moving) car.

Examples include a 16-year-old boy who walked into a telephone pole while texting and suffered a concussion; a 28-year-old man who tripped and fractured a finger on the hand gripping his cellphone; and a 68-year-old man who fell off the porch while talking on a cellphone, spraining a thumb and an ankle and causing dizziness.”

References:
Forget Gum. Walking and Using Phone Is Risky. NYTimes.

You will get some ideas from the following conversation on Twitter:

@dreamingspires: I realised that a previous problem in my blog was that I was writing for people more qualified than me – instead of health professionals just starting out.

@DrVes: One of the best approaches to educational blogging is to write for yourself as you learn or write for beginners – which is basically the same thing.

@dreamingspires: good advice – as an(ex)publisher suddenly having to write myself as opposed to hiding behind someone else doing it is… a learning process.

@DrVes: Did Twitter help?

@dreamingspires: Twitter helped in the sense of connecting me into a community, I didn’t ‘micro-blog’ though.

@DrVes: Twitter makes you more comfortable to write in public – you don’t have to “micro-blog”…

@dreamingspires: This IS true and my experience – it reduced my stage fright!

@DrVes: Also, you may have micro-blogged on Twitter or somewhere else without even knowing it… I set up my blog posts to publish automatically in the future — it may help with your “stage fright”.

@dreamingspires: To be honest I am unsure what micro-blogging is — specific tweets on a topic like you do, or a mini conversation? Yes, I also now autopublish via Twitter feed, and now using Stumble too. OK – microblog is an ‘opinion’/link/statement.

@DrVes: Anything you post on Twitter is micro-blog as long it’s not only replies… A comment on a comment is not a blog. I think you qualify as a fully-fledged blogger and microblogger now…

@dreamingspires: You mean I’ve MADE IT?! Newbie happiness.

@DrVes: It’s official: You’ve made it. You’re a blogger now. Expect you share of nasty comments and spam…

Rob Centor:

The annual Perioperative Medicine Summit 2010 starts on March 4 in Miami:

http://periopmedicine.org and @PeriopSummit

I maintain their website for the University of Miami and Cleveland Clinic, and help with the Twitter account, hosting of PDF handouts, videos, etc.

Expect multiple free handouts posted on the front page of the summit website during March 4-6, 2010 and clinical pearls and discussions on Twitter: http://periopmedicine.org and @PeriopSummit

Help Your Heart With the Mediterranean Diet from ChefMD.

A new study finds the tea shows promise as a possible oral cancer fighter.

From Reuters:

Young men who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day or more had IQ scores 7.5 points lower than non-smokers in a study of over 20,000 Israeli military recruits.

“Adolescents with poorer IQ scores might be targeted for programs designed to prevent smoking,” concluded the researchers in the journal Addiction.

The average IQ for non-smokers was 101, while it was 94 for men who had started smoking before entering the military. IQ steadily dropped as the number of cigarettes smoked increased, from 98 for people who smoked one to five cigarettes daily to 90 for those who smoked more than a pack a day. IQ scores from 84 to 116 are considered to indicate average intelligence.

The study may suggest that lower IQ individuals are more likely to choose to smoke, rather than that smoking makes people less intelligent.

Dr Mike Cadogan – By definition non-smokers smarter than smokers…

Some interesting abstracts from PubMed:

“Google is an efficient web resource for identifying specific medical information.” Google was more efficient than all other resources for identifying medical information (P less than 0.0001) http://bit.ly/6FXATW

Google Scholar versus PubMed in locating primary literature to answer drug-related questions: no major differences http://bit.ly/8OygYt

A school based compulsory physical activity improved fitness and reduced adiposity in children. BMJ, Feb 2010.

Dr. Wes: Cardiology is easy until it isn’t

No doubt Mr. Cheney has had impecable cardiovacular care. But despite that care, after three bypasses, a history of atrial fibrillation, deep venous thrombosis, a cardiomyopathy that requires a defibrillator or two, and scores of medications to stabilize the angina – you’ve suddenly got a tough case: http://drwes.blogspot.com/2010/02/dick-vs-bill.html

PeRSSonalized Geriatrics from Webicina.com

http://www.webicina.com/perssonalized/?page=1&cat=37

PeRSSonalized Medicine is a free, easy-to-use aggregator of quality medical information that lets you select your favourite resources and read the latest news and articles about a medical specialty or a medical condition in one personalized place.

Hypertension is a “neglected disease”

“Although hypertension is relatively easy to prevent, simple to diagnose, and relatively inexpensive to treat, it remains the second leading cause of death among Americans,” said David Fleming, who led the study committee that wrote the report for the US Institute of Medicine. Hypertension is the most common primary diagnosis in the United States, affecting about 73 million adults (one in three).

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/short/340/feb22_2/c1074

Can’t Remember Faces? Blame Your Genes

The ability to remember a face is inherited, according to a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers also found that people who are good at remembering faces are not necessarily good at other memory tasks. Face recognition ability comes from a dedicated circuit, or set of circuits, in the brain.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123975339&ft=1&f=1007

Erythropoiesis stimulating drugs caused tumours to grow faster and led to earlier deaths in some cancer patients, prompting the FDA to restrict their use.

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/short/340/feb22_2/c1050

Medical implications of the Taser: Serious harm is rare, but incident reporting needs to be improved

Amnesty International has identified more than 300 deaths associated with Taser use in the United States. However, association is not causation, and other factors complicate the interpretation of fatal outcomes. The dominant conducted energy device used in police forces worldwide is the Taser X26. This device generates five second trains of electrical pulses that are delivered to the body either by two propelled barbs (which embed in clothing or skin and remain connected to the handset by conductive wire) or by direct contact of the handset’s electrodes (drive-stun mode).

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/short/340/feb22_1/c853

Rational Or Emotional? After you’ve lost weight, you have an increase in the emotional response to food

One of the hormones that play a role in controlling appetite in the body is called leptin. After significant weight loss, leptin levels drop. This seems to signal to the brain a need to seek more food.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123894109&ft=1&f=1007

Image source: OpenClipArt.org, public domain.

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From BBC:

A popstar gave up on social networking after a dinner party at which she realised she spent more time updating Twitter than interacting with her companions.

Online communities like Twitter, where people follow each other without being acquainted in real life, can be brutal: “If you’re going to broadcast as a tweeter then you need to be thick skinned,” says Dr Yeung, “If you’re the kind of person who takes things personally, opening yourself up to criticism from strangers is not a good idea.”

A Twitter user: “I could not fully concentrate on anything for longer than 20 minutes,” says Carolyn. I simply had to check and update the feed. What if someone had asked a question of me? What if there was an interesting piece of information related to our experiment that I could read? It was highly distracting and I felt genuinely anxious.”

“Everybody craves information,” says applied psychologist Dr Lucy Atcheson, “It’s what makes the world interesting. But you have to ask whether you need it all. Twitter has an element of making people feel important.”

“You can get addicted to thinking that somebody is interested in your every move. You have this idea that there is a virtual audience. But when are you tweeting information, and when is it just vanity?”

References:
Could you get by without Twitter? BBC.

A retrospective record review of pediatric outpatients (age, 2-18 years) included simultaneous measurement of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH] D) and fasting plasma glucose or 25(OH) D and a lipid panel.

25(OH) D levels were inversely correlated with fasting plasma glucose levels.

Every year, millions of observant Jews fast on their holiest day, Yom Kippur, and millions of Muslims fast for the month of Ramadan. And every year, as many as 40% of those who fast develop serious headaches.

Yom Kippur headache is a well documented phenomenon but the causes are unclear, but doctors have suspected withdrawal from caffeine, nicotine, oversleeping, and dehydration.

About 36% of subjects who took COX-2 inhibitor etoricoxib (related to Vioxx) developed headaches, compared to about 68% who took placebo. Those who took etoricoxib also had less severe headaches, and they had an easier time fasting.

References:
Could Vioxx cousin prevent religious fast headache? WebMD.

From WebMD:

- Gardasil human papillomavirus vaccine is now suggested for boys. Previously recommended only for girls.

- There are 2 new recommendations for boosting the bacterial meningitis vaccine: children at high risk should get the shot as early as age 2 and as late as age 6. Children not at high risk should get the first shot at age 11 or 12 (or ages 13 to 18 if not previously vaccinated).

- Preference for combination vaccines over separate injections of vaccine components.

CDC, Get The Picture: Child Immunizations.

References:
New Schedule for Childhood Vaccines. WebMD.

From Google: Antisocial networking. FT.com:

At the root of the problem is Google’s decision to use Gmail, with its 175m active users, as a launchpad for its latest push into social networking. All users were enrolled as soon as they clicked a link to look at the service, and many found the names of those they corresponded with most frequently by e-mail – usually a private list – became the basis for a public “social network” of contacts on Buzz. That risked exposing the details of “estranged spouses, current lovers, attorneys and doctors”.

On average, a person needs about eight hours a night to preserve performance.

Acute sleep loss is being awake for more than 24 hours in a row and chronic sleep loss is getting only about four to seven hours of sleep per night.

While most people caught up on acute sleep loss with a single night of 10 hours sleep, those with chronic sleep loss showed deteriorating performance for each hour spent awake.

People are largely unaware that they are chronically sleep-deprived but they are more vulnerable to sudden sleepiness, inattentiveness, and potentially, accidents and errors.

Three days is not enough to recover from chronic sleep loss, but they still do not know how many days or weeks may be needed.

References:
Chronic sleep loss hampers performance. Reuters, 2010.

Eric Topol says we’ll soon use our smartphones to monitor our vital signs and chronic conditions. At TEDMED, he highlights several of the most important wireless devices in medicine’s future — all helping to keep more of us out of hospital beds.

From the NYTimes:

Exhaust from cars and trucks exacerbates asthma in children and may cause new respiratory illnesses and heart problems in adults, even resulting in deaths.

The meta-analysis included 700 peer-reviewed studies on varying aspects of motor vehicle emissions and health. It found “evidence of a causal relationship,” but not proof of one, between pollution from vehicles and impaired lung function and accelerated hardening of the arteries.

The study found that the biggest effects occurred among people who lived within 300 to 500 meters — about two-tenths to three-tenths of a mile — from highways and major roads. That applies to 30-40% of the population of North America.

“Like the issue of second-hand smoke, it’s very difficult to understand the exact mechanisms that make it bad — but it’s easy to understand that it is in fact bad.”

References:
Report Links Vehicle Exhaust to Health Problems. NYT, 2010.

From ACP Hospitalist:

“Dr. Lamberts’ words aren’t just vanishing into cyberspace. His blog, Musings of a Distractible Mind, gets about 20,000 visitors who view 50,000 pages a month, according to his own analytics data. By the end of 2009, his list of Twitter followers numbered nearly 1,500 and counting.

Today’s physicians have an ever-expanding number of social media vehicles through which to express themselves. Tools like Twitter, Facebook and blogging can potentially help physicians better educate and interact with patients, perhaps even humanizing themselves in the process. But mishandling that powerful online megaphone can potentially risk, or at the very least blur, the doctor-patient relationship, according to social media-savvy physicians.

Initially, when he was virtually unread, Dr. Lamberts said he blogged about a few interesting cases, always cloaking the patient details. But he soon halted that practice.”

I follow a similar approach described in detail in the website disclaimer:

“There is no real life patient data on this website. Please note: we do not write or “blog” about patients. All case descriptions are fictional, similar to the descriptions you can find in a multiple choice questions textbook for board exam preparation. Cases course and description do not follow real cases.”

http://clinicalcases.org/2002/01/disclaimer-and-terms-of-use-agreement.html

Dr. Mike Cadogan, an ER physician and an award-winning medical blogger, in essence asked on Google Buzz: “Why keep blogging on health topics?” See his post and the comments below:

Dr. Mike Cadogan

Some days I worry about being so connected on the web. Some days I feel I should just treat the patient physically in front of me and concentrate the years of contextual learning on the individual consulting me for treatment.

Then I stumble across a pixellated torrent of self-diagnosing, non-contextual, copy-paste tripe (on some website)…

Question: “i am feeling so much…itching in my breast….that i have scratched it and it has converted into a wound….i hav used antiseptic cream also it cured my wound but again i feel itching…plz tell me some solution to get rid of it plz…..and i am so… confused…..plz help me….”


Informed Answer: “If you had breast cancer, you would see and feel a lump (cancerous tumor). You probably just got bit by a bug or something.”

…and I feel justified for attempting to join with colleagues in providing open source medical information visually enhanced for contextual learning and iteration…

Ves Dimov, M.D.

Don’t make web publishing feel like a job. Slow down. Relax. Enjoy. The work on the web as a physician is extremely important because it provides credible information.

From WebMD:

More than 90% of Americans carry the plastics chemical BPA in their bodies. But those with the highest BPA levels have the highest risk of heart disease.

BPA — bisphenol A — is one of the world’s most heavily produced chemicals used to make PVC pipes, epoxy resins that line food cans, food packaging, and drink containers.

There’s no way to avoid BPA entirely: It’s in food, water, and air.

Some ways to reduce exposure to BPA:

- Don’t microwave polycarbonate plastic food containers. Polycarbonate containers that contain BPA usually have a No. 7 on the bottom.

- Reduce your use of canned foods.

- When possible, opt for glass, porcelain, or stainless steel containers, particularly for hot food or liquids.